Exhibition run: Sept. 17, 2026 – Nov. 11, 2026

Artists employ techniques to create visual elements that are unique: brushstrokes on canvas, dashes in ink or graphite, or incised lines. While some of the dabs of paint, brush-marks, or patterning are conscious, much mark-making is accidental or unconscious.

ARTalk, October 1: Traces of Being: The Timeless Language of Mark Making, by Susan Goetz Zwirn, painter and professor of art.

Exhibition run: Nov. 19, 2026 – Jan. 13, 2027

Color is the first thing you notice about an artwork. But, as a critical formal element used in art making, artists' choices for hues and saturations are signifiers. This exhibit is about how artists employ color, their relationship to it, and how these palette choices impact the viewer.

ARTalk, December 3: Made in San Francisco: The Evolution of the California School of Fine Arts, 1945–1969. Curator Dr. Emma Acker will discuss the forthcoming de Young museum exhibition Made in San Francisco, which considers the pivotal role the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA, later the San Francisco Art Institute) played in catalyzing many of the Bay Area's most significant postwar artistic developments and movements. She will give particular focus to the color used by these iconic West Coast artists.